How a ‘race’ test reduced British schoolkids to tears
A controversial TV documentary segregated classmates by colour and got them to talk about racism as part of an experiment to unmask unconscious bias… with some startling results
ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD Henry is a joyful little boy with a beaming smile and a mop of vibrant ginger hair who seems to be content among his friends from rainbow ethnicities at his comprehensive school. Bright-eyed and alert he listens carefully to his teachers, follows the rules and never gets in trouble at Glenthorne High School in south London.
Tonight, though, Channel 4 viewers will see him – and others in his class – become so emotionally distressed by a sociological exercise to gauge unconscious racial bias that they are driven to tears.
Some scenes are painful to watch as Henry and 23 other pupils in his Year 7 class are confronted with the issue of racial discrimination in an unflinching experiment to detect whether there is underlying unconscious racism in Britain’s classrooms.
Using a method widely employed in schools in America, social scientists gave the children a video “game” that reveals whether the player displays unconscious racial bias.
On one side of the screen are cartoon faces of white people and on the other are faces of people of colour. Words like “horrible” appear and children are asked to assign these adjectives to the groups by swiping the word left or right.
Although it sounds brutal and crude the software is widely used in America, where there is a greater racial divide than in Britain.
Cameras in the classroom capture the uncomfortable moment when the children swipe one way or the other as well as at the end of the “game” when the tally reveals that pupils have shown unconscious racism in the way they responded.
Looking lost, Henry seems completely overwhelmed by the result and annoyed that the “game” does not allow a third option of consigning the words to the trash bin to avoid having to make an agonising choice.
When the result comes in, the class is divided into “affinity” groups. All the white boys and girls go off to discuss race in one room and all the black and ethnic children go off to another room.
“I didn’t feel comfortable,” says Henry at this point. “It felt really weird. I choose to be with friends, not by race. I just think, call me a ginger European boy. I don’t think that much about race.”
FARRAH, a mixed-race girl is equally baffled, torn in two about whether she should go off with white kids or the black and ethnic children. Looking perplexed she pleads: “I don’t want to be described by race. I want to be described by personality. Where do I go because I’m half-white and half-Asian?”
Rather alarmingly she adds: “I thought I’m not pretty. The only way to be pretty is to be white.”
A black boy was clearly distressed about an incident in his local sweet shop when he says he was asked to leave because of his colour. In heartbreaking scenes, the boy weeps as he tries to explain what happened to his parents.
Another girl was affected by comments made about her headdress on a bus. Clearly these incidents outside school had a truly devastating impact on the children.
The two separate groups are brought together later for a discussion, which makes extremely painful viewing as they confront the enormous issues and complexities surrounding the issue of racism and the test.
One white girl admits to struggling with the whole concept, saying: “I thought the police would come for me.”
However, Bright, a close friend of Henry’s, says: “I love being described as black.” While the cameras roll and the children are juggling the intensely difficult issues, sociologists are monitoring their reactions on screens in another room, making comments and judgments about the way they react. The programmes were shot 15 months ago, so don’t have the backdrop of George
Floyd’s murder in the United States or the worldwide Black Lives Matter protests.
Mariama Richards, an expert in how to tackle racism in US schools, was flown in to speak to the children and help guide them through the three-week process which has the aim of giving children the confidence to talk about racism in a constructive way.
Channel 4 describes the two one-hour-long programmes, called The School That Tried To End Racism, as a “bold and engaging” exercise.
David DeHaney, the creative director and executive producer, says: “They’re gripping, shocking and funny in equal measure, the kids really throw themselves in and attempt to tackle issues adults wouldn’t dare.”
However, Conservative peer Lord Peter Lilley, who was invited to watch the Zoom preview, said: “It is not clear to me in what way this is unconscious racism.
“It clearly made the white children feel
rather miserable and unhappy but what happens in the second instalment we haven’t seen?”
He certainly had a point. Nothing said by any of the white children was remotely racist and only one black child recounted a racist incident when he was asked to leave the sweetshop, but the details of that incident were not fully explained.
In a zoom chat which followed the preview screening, Mariama, speaking from the US, told him: “I didn’t actually experience the white kids as miserable. What I would encourage you to think about is that we’re preparing them to actually not be scared of a huge part of our community and that sometimes means facing some realities that feel uncomfortable. And discomfort is part of something we all have to deal with when we talk about racism.
“The goal is to strengthen their racial literacy and their capacity in these areas.”
A teacher at Glenthorne High School, Dr Sotonje Odugbemi, said both white and black children cried during the making of the film, but even so she felt it had been a useful exercise.
She has a seven-year-old son who came to her one day and said he wanted to be a peach colour, suggesting the race issues begin to affect children at an early age.
SHE felt the country needed to have a deep, honest and sometimes painful conversation about race to help children of all races develop in society.
Dr Nicola Rollock, reader in equity and education at Goldsmiths University and a consultant specialising in racial justice in education, closely monitored the experiment to assess the reactions of the children. “What we saw really clearly in the documentary is that these children, particularly the black and ethnic minority groups, have already experienced racism,” she said.
“Some of them talked off air about their experiences, say at football stadiums, but it’s a normal part of their lives. For the white pupils we can see their discomfort initially in terms of talking about race and talking about themselves as being white because we know that doesn’t happen often. White people don’t tend to see themselves as white.
“I think what we see through the affinity groups, and the documentary more broadly is that they develop a confidence in terms of talking about race.
“It is something we should be doing, encouraging schools, encouraging children, to talk about their experiences more freely.”
Professor Rhiannon Turner, director of the Centre for Identity and Intergroup Relations at Queens University, Belfast, admitted she found watching the reactions of the children painful in part but overall she felt it had been good for them. “It was a delight to see how they changed and developed.”
Both she and Nicola would like to see a radical overhaul of the education system so that children from the age of five can benefit from the methods of racism awareness teaching coming out of the United States.
Nicola strongly believes if the pupils had not taken part in the experience “they would have grown up to be the kind of white people who downplay racism, who deny racism”.
She feels society is not at a point for people to deal with the “embedded” and “historic” issues surrounding racism.
“Racism is very real in UK society and we shouldn’t just rely on what’s happening politically to wake us up,” she added. “Many of us have had very difficult and very painful conversations with children, our children, family members, about racism and how to cope with racism. I would like to see a radical overhaul of the education system from kindergarten through to higher education.”
Children of colour are being disadvantaged by the system, she says, and that needs to change.
David DeHaney offers some glimmer of hope for the future saying the final programme, to be broadcast on July 2, shows the children becoming more comfortable talking about race. “You get an extraordinary conclusion by the end of the exercise,” he says. ●The School That Tried To End Racism, tonight at 9pm, Channel 4